How Pinegrow made over $47,000 during Black Friday week

We recently published our guide to Black Friday discounts, based on all the software sales we’ve processed over the years. But whilst data is great, we also want to bring this to life with some practical examples: over the next few weeks we’ll be adding real life stories of what software businesses did for Black Friday - and the results they got out of it.

The results: $47,000 sales during Black Friday week

Revenue growth

+512%

Discount

-50%

Price point

$49-249/year

Customers

Mixed B2C/B2B

Pinegrow experienced a very strong growth in sales during the holiday period, making $47,091 during Black Friday week. Interestingly their 2 biggest days were just before Thanksgiving, and just after Cyber Monday.

What did Pinegrow do during their Black Friday campaign?

Rather than focussing their promotions on the holidays specifically (Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday), Pinegrow instead offered a 50% discount on their product for an entire week.

There was only one difference from the full price product: instead of getting a full year of free updates including the next major version update, customers using the discount would benefit from free version updates for Pinegrow 2 only.

Their success was augmented by running smart email campaigns before Black Friday and after Cyber Monday to ensure that their promotions didn’t get lost in the noise. This tactic, combined with a 50% discount clearly paid off, with Pinegrow seeing a 512% increase in sales over the holiday period.

This email was sent on the 22nd, just before Thanksgiving, resulting in the 2nd best sales of the month. What can we learn?

“50% off all editions”: this makes the offer appear very generous, both in the amount discounted and the wide scope of products to which it applies

Big and bold visuals: the Dollar amount for each of the editions is clearly displayed - doubling down on the fact that all editions are included in this deal

Simple, straight to the point copy: no long list of benefits or features - just a couple of lines and a button with a simple “get the deal” call to action. When the discount is very compelling, there’s less need to go overboard with the marketing…

This email was sent on Tuesday 29th, just after Cyber Monday, resulting in the highest sales of the month.

Very similar copy: the only change adds some urgency (“today is the last day of our Thanksgiving / Black Friday sale”)

Once again, when a discount is very compelling and you see strong sales with an email, it can work to keep things simple until they stop working!

Pinegrow’s experience clearly shows that Black Friday is much more than just a long weekend, and that buyers can be captured throughout the holiday period.

Running deals slightly before and after the main holiday days can also help you escape the noise (imagine how many emails your potential customers will receive!) - although customers may also be less likely to hunt for bargains.

Useful? Stay tuned for more Black Friday and Cyber Monday insights throughout October and November. Simply subscribe to our newsletter to receive all of it in one neat email.

About Pinegrow - build websites faster

Pinegrow is a desktop app that lets you build responsive websites faster with live multi-page editing, CSS styling and smart components for Bootstrap, Foundation, AngularJS and WordPress.

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